S.U.P.E.R natural is a horror/survival themed wad that eschews standard Doom gameplay and leaves the player defenseless, with the only course of action is to run and hide from the small selection of enemies present in the map. It's a demo release of what promises to be an extensive map set when the mod sees release. The author, PyroScourge, has worked on a few mods before this with the most notable being Winter's Fury. Much like that mod, Supernatural is a visual feast that will tank a lot of Doom player's PCs, but it's nothing un-managable.
The setup's fairly simple, and told in the main menu. Straight away Pyroscourge sets up a compelling ambiance even before you start the demo itself. It's only a short amount of time after the demon invasion of Doom 2, and you are Sylvius Leonard - with your home destroyed by the battle you see no option but to hit the road, but pretty soon your car runs out of gas and you're stranded quite conveniently in front of a spooky forest and an abandoned UAC outpost. The forest is one of the most well realised ones I've ever seen in an older game, and even has atmospheric fog to set the mood. While you move slower, the author wisely added footstep sounds to the player to help with the atmosphere. Music is incredibly sparse apart from a few stingers every now and then, with ambient sounds doing the sheer brunt of the work. It works well - with a faint howling wind noise in the forest and deep churning of machinery heard throughout the complex.
After a brief trek through the forest, you enter into the facility and are greeted with a pitch-black base, with only the odd ceiling light to convince you this isn't a bug. It takes a bit of trial and error to find out where you're going at this point, but eventually you find some gas for your car and head back. Things aren't that easy, and then shortly afterwards you get the power going at which point the mod really starts to get going. While the demo is fairly linear, there's still a lot of exploration - Pyroscourge has added a PDU system with many different categories and you'll find them dotted throughout the base. They're fairly well written, and do a good job of establishing the world beyond whatever part you're currently occupying, but they also foreshadow locations that you know you'll be visiting when the final release comes. There's hints of a malignant character behind the scenes, but how this will play out isn't clear since the demo is essentially the introductory portion of the mod.
Anyway enough scene setting, let's talk about the design of the project. The visual design is simple fantastic; there's hardly a dull corridor and even mundane rooms have imposing ceilings and detailed walls. One of the few criticisms I could mention is that it does a feel bit over-designed at times, and so far in the demo there's not actually much meat to the room's, just impressively designed borders (I'll probably elaborate on this in a design post or something) Also dotted throughout the base are holographic displays, which look great and really sell the high-tech theme of the base. Like Winter's Fury, Pyroscourge really knows how to make a place feel like massive amounts of power is running through it. A later generator sequence is really impressive for this reason too.
The map works on a hub system, which works best with the gameplay style going on. There's not much backtracking needed in the demo, but leaving the map transitions there at least hint to the scope of the project. Automap is disabled, which I can understand the design choice it makes navigating kinda difficult. A decent solution would of been to have the character be able to pick up hand-drawn maps of each section or something, with places of interest marked out so we could navigate by sight at least.
Whilst most of the demo is spent exploring, there are enemies dotted around the maps. You can't fight them, so avoiding and running away is the only course of action. There's never enough of them that it becomes frustrating, and there's no health-packs to manage. This'll probably turn people off of the mod; I was hesitant at first but after playing the mod it's definitly to Supernatural's advantage. Pyroscourge has poured great effort into the maps so that it's a pleasure to walk around and try and unravel the mystery, so I don't really miss having a shotgun at hand. There IS a boss encounter at the end of the pack, but the issue is that it consists of hitting switches in a certain order whilst dodging death rays. It's no more of a crime here than it was in Half-life though, but I'm only worried that any other boss encounters will be too similar in the final version.
Finally, there's some really good sequences that are creepy but don't rely on jump-scares. The most important part about the setting is that seeing a corpse and blood means something again. When you're armed with a plasma-rifle, the bodies in the doom games are just meaningless. They're literally background decoration. Being defenseless and vulnerable removes the advantage you had and suddenly you're no different from those guys who got horribly butchered.
Anyways this 'review' sounds more like an advertisement looking back through it, but it's a demo release so there's not much more to say. If you're willing to try out new gameplay styles in Doom than play this mod. Pyroscourge's imagination is solid and the demo delivers a memorable experience, and hopefully the final release will bring even more of that.
Link to release thread and download:
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35879
The setup's fairly simple, and told in the main menu. Straight away Pyroscourge sets up a compelling ambiance even before you start the demo itself. It's only a short amount of time after the demon invasion of Doom 2, and you are Sylvius Leonard - with your home destroyed by the battle you see no option but to hit the road, but pretty soon your car runs out of gas and you're stranded quite conveniently in front of a spooky forest and an abandoned UAC outpost. The forest is one of the most well realised ones I've ever seen in an older game, and even has atmospheric fog to set the mood. While you move slower, the author wisely added footstep sounds to the player to help with the atmosphere. Music is incredibly sparse apart from a few stingers every now and then, with ambient sounds doing the sheer brunt of the work. It works well - with a faint howling wind noise in the forest and deep churning of machinery heard throughout the complex.
After a brief trek through the forest, you enter into the facility and are greeted with a pitch-black base, with only the odd ceiling light to convince you this isn't a bug. It takes a bit of trial and error to find out where you're going at this point, but eventually you find some gas for your car and head back. Things aren't that easy, and then shortly afterwards you get the power going at which point the mod really starts to get going. While the demo is fairly linear, there's still a lot of exploration - Pyroscourge has added a PDU system with many different categories and you'll find them dotted throughout the base. They're fairly well written, and do a good job of establishing the world beyond whatever part you're currently occupying, but they also foreshadow locations that you know you'll be visiting when the final release comes. There's hints of a malignant character behind the scenes, but how this will play out isn't clear since the demo is essentially the introductory portion of the mod.
Anyway enough scene setting, let's talk about the design of the project. The visual design is simple fantastic; there's hardly a dull corridor and even mundane rooms have imposing ceilings and detailed walls. One of the few criticisms I could mention is that it does a feel bit over-designed at times, and so far in the demo there's not actually much meat to the room's, just impressively designed borders (I'll probably elaborate on this in a design post or something) Also dotted throughout the base are holographic displays, which look great and really sell the high-tech theme of the base. Like Winter's Fury, Pyroscourge really knows how to make a place feel like massive amounts of power is running through it. A later generator sequence is really impressive for this reason too.
The map works on a hub system, which works best with the gameplay style going on. There's not much backtracking needed in the demo, but leaving the map transitions there at least hint to the scope of the project. Automap is disabled, which I can understand the design choice it makes navigating kinda difficult. A decent solution would of been to have the character be able to pick up hand-drawn maps of each section or something, with places of interest marked out so we could navigate by sight at least.
Whilst most of the demo is spent exploring, there are enemies dotted around the maps. You can't fight them, so avoiding and running away is the only course of action. There's never enough of them that it becomes frustrating, and there's no health-packs to manage. This'll probably turn people off of the mod; I was hesitant at first but after playing the mod it's definitly to Supernatural's advantage. Pyroscourge has poured great effort into the maps so that it's a pleasure to walk around and try and unravel the mystery, so I don't really miss having a shotgun at hand. There IS a boss encounter at the end of the pack, but the issue is that it consists of hitting switches in a certain order whilst dodging death rays. It's no more of a crime here than it was in Half-life though, but I'm only worried that any other boss encounters will be too similar in the final version.
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Anyways this 'review' sounds more like an advertisement looking back through it, but it's a demo release so there's not much more to say. If you're willing to try out new gameplay styles in Doom than play this mod. Pyroscourge's imagination is solid and the demo delivers a memorable experience, and hopefully the final release will bring even more of that.
Link to release thread and download:
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35879
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